


All He Ever Wanted

by Capesandshapes



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien can bring the dead back to life, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Marinette dies, Pushing Daisies AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:26:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27034156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capesandshapes/pseuds/Capesandshapes
Summary: With one touch, Adrien can bring back the dead. With another, he can end their life once more, permanently.When the love of his life, Marinette Dupain-Cheng dies he knows what he needs to do, but wonders if he'd ever find the strength to.A Pushing Daisies AU
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 9
Kudos: 70





	All He Ever Wanted

Adrien Agreste was, for all intents and purposes, a normal boy. 

Or at least as normal as the son of the world’s most famous fashion designer and a multi-talented actress could be. 

Young Adrien learned to ride his bike at a reasonable age, watched Sunday television, then did things that he definitely shouldn’t; just as every young boy is prone to do. He kissed his mother goodnight, read comic books under covers, and stayed up far too late. In the mornings, he ate two eggs, four slices of toast, and an obscene amount of hash browns; just as all normal people do. He was an ordinary boy until one day, he was decidedly not. 

Adrien Agreste was eight years, nine weeks, five days, four hours, and 12 minutes old when it became very evident that he was, in fact, very strange. 

Plagg, the family cat, was a very old and fat thing that subsisted, much to his mother’s chagrin, off of table scraps from the kitchen table. It was not uncommon to see Adrien slip slices of cheese, his least favorite food, off the table and to the housecat. Unfortunately, such careless actions have consequences when small animals are involved. 

Plagg was precisely 12 years, 27 weeks, three days, two hours, and ten minutes old when he choked on a piece of camembert, destined to never wake up again. Or so it seemed. 

Adrien Agreste had a gift, one that laid invisible behind the thick brick walls of his family’s mansion. With a single touch, his hands burrowing deep into Plagg’s black fur, he could bring the dead back to life. 

But only for a price. 

A rather large owl died that night, but Adrien would only become aware of that much later. The rules were simple and became evident very soon as Adrien sat in his room that night, touching the dead ladybugs that had gathered in the windowsills of his room. 

With one touch, he could bring the dead back to life and, with another, they would die once more, permanently. But every life given, another must fall. After a minute, something else would have to pass. He’d kept Plagg, but something else had to go in his place.

* * *

At 15 years, 31 weeks, six days, 1 hour, and 37 minutes old, Adrien fell in love. 

Her name was Marinette and she was, at that very moment, 14 years, 22 weeks, four days, 5 hours, and 14 minutes old. She had eyes like the sky, hair like ink, and two perfectly pink lips that seemed to move endlessly. Her face blushed with an indescribable ruby and her cheeks rose whenever he entered a room. 

Adrien was not sure if he believed in love before that moment, but when he saw her face illuminated by the lights of the city reflecting off the Seine, he wondered how he could ever doubt it. 

Being around Marinette was simple, easy, and yet nerve-wracking at the same time. She was brave, headstrong, and intelligent; yet also clumsy, nervous, and scatterbrained. 

She had dreams, big, bold ones that she would keep him up all night talking about. He had desires, like to know the feel of her lips and how perfectly her hand could fit in his. 

They met during his brief stint in public schools, and yet it felt like they’d known each other all of their lives. They felt an indescribable connection yet were both too entranced to truly define it. Theirs was an ill-fated love, one that would never reach fruition. 

At 18 years, 47 weeks, three days, 9 hours, and 11 minutes old young Adrien’s life was changed forever when his mother vanished, never to be seen again. 

For all of his talents, for all of his strangeness, for all of the love that overfilled his heart; he could not bring her back. 

“You may bring back the dead, but what use is that when you can’t bring back someone who is truly gone?” Those were the last words Gabriel said to his son, before demanding via a simple slip of paper that Adrien stay at his side, that he haunt the mansion where the shadow of his mother’s disappearance still lingered at every corner. 

And so, he did. He stayed in the mansion and he waited, hidden behind the walls once more, for his mother to return. He would not let his father be alone in that. 

Life was good, for a while. His friends still contacted him, and Marinette still visited. They shared a kiss by candlelit on the one-year anniversary of his mother’s disappearance, she tasted like strawberry and his dry lips tasted of medicated chapstick. 

That was good enough for him, until the day it wasn’t for her. 

“I have to go, it’s only for a year,” Marinette proclaimed. “By the end, I’ll be someone.” 

She always wanted that, to be someone. To be some great fashion designer that all the world wanted to see, to be the name on magazines, bragged about by stars and the far too rich. She wanted parties in her name, big offices and the awe of fashion week attendees. 

All he ever wanted was to be hers. 

But with a ring on her finger and a promise of letters every day, he let her go, unaware that she would be gone forever. 

* * *

It always feels like only a moment when everything changes; let me assure you that it is not. Between identifying the body, notifying the family, and discussing details of the case with the press; it took four days, eight hours, and nineteen minutes before Adrien knew that Marinette Dupain-Cheng was dead. 

**_Daughter of Famous Parisian Pastry Chef Murdered on Cruise Ship_ **, the whole thing felt like a joke. Like some cruel god was merely playing a prank, and soon Marinette would return, wrapping her arms around his waist and asking him if he thought it was funny. 

It wouldn’t be funny, and he wouldn’t be able to lie and tell her that it was. 

Within days he was at her wake, unable to truly be consoled as they kept their relationship quiet, even from her parents. He would stand and he would eulogize her as a friend, even as his heart laid shattered into pieces on the floor, trotted over by everyone who claimed to know her better. Marinette, his Marinette, was gone. 

“You feeling alright, dude?” Nino’s voice brought him crashing back down to reality, standing next to him by the refreshment table as they waited downstairs for the family to say their final goodbyes before lowering her into the ground. “You know, she wouldn’t want you to be upset like this. Marinette would want us to start moving on as soon as possible.” 

“I know, I just…” _Can’t._ There was no world in which Adrien could move on, no world in which Adrien could imagine himself standing beside someone else or pressing kisses along the hairline of another woman. The simple fact was, for Adrien Agreste, there was no world without Marinette Dupain-Cheng. 

That’s why he waited for her family to return. That’s why he muttered an apology under his breath as he brushed the shoulder of Tom Dupain. That’s why he wandered up the stairs to a room that was supposed to be empty. 

And that’s why Adrien Agreste made an agonizing decision. 

She looked like an angel laying there in a light pink dress of her own design, her black hair pooled in loose waves at her shoulders. With flush-painted cheeks and ruby red lips, it looked like she could open her eyes at any minute and sit up from her bed of cream silk, hands gripping the sides of her mahogany coffin as she spoke sweet nothings into his ear. 

A touch, a single touch was all it would take. And yet, how would he do it? 

To kiss was too forward, too forceful. To touch her cheek wasn’t enough. 

_He remembered laying the grass once, his fingers intertwined with hers. Her chiming laughter as he pointed out cloud formations, entertained about the fact that they never saw quite the same thing._

He shuffled towards her, a strange case of nerves overtaking him. It was supposed to be easy; it was always easy when he dreamed of doing this the past few days. 

_He remembered her hand sitting on top of his as she leaned forward, her lips kissing the tears off of his cheeks when he truly realized that his mother would not be coming home._

His body shivered against his will. 

_He remembered dancing in his kitchens to the made-up rhythm of a song that did not play, twirling her so that the edge of her skirt and locks of her hair raised into the air. How perfectly she fit into his arms as he swayed her from side to side, how eagerly she accepted his lips as they danced up and down her neck._

The breath caught in his throat as his hand reached out. 

_“I love you,” She whispered into his back, unaware that he was awake as they laid in bed together._

Her skin was mere inches, centimeters even, from contact. 

_“I always will.”_

For a moment he thought that he wouldn’t do it, that it was too selfish a thing for him to attempt. But her voice came back to him, far too clear. 

_“Whenever you need to, take my hand and we’ll go through it together. We’ll have time to figure it out, after all…”_

“I promised you forever,” he repeated, having clung to the words that she once told him. 

Clenching his eyes shut, he reached towards her, brushing her hand and, just as she did then when he turned to face her, she gasped. 

Once again, he was hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, it's the Pushing Daisies AU that no one wanted. Well, jokes on me because I'm the fool who wrote it.
> 
> If you like my writing and you want to see more, feel free to drop a request in my ask box at https://capesandshapes.tumblr.com/ask, where I will try to be as active as possible in fulfilling them. All of my fanfiction will be posted to my Tumblr and Archive of Our Own, so stay tuned!.


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